Ontology development, guidance on the use of ontologies and practices for ontology adoption are important drivers of the Interoperability of (Soil) data. This repository facilitates a number of initiatives to facilitate interoperability. The main focus is on Soil Obervation data, from the field, the lab, as well as experimental setups.
The ontology efforts are clustered in 3 areas:
- Metadata about data and knowledge resources, projects, people and organisations
- Terminology (glossaries and code lists) for use in the soil domain
- Data models to capture observations, measurements and samples and derived data
Soilwise-he aims to capture on both data and knowledge resources:
- typical metadata, such as title, abstract, author, date
- in which context (project/funding) the resource has been created
- in which catalogue(s) it is described
- any observations (validation, usage, user feedback) on the resource during its lifetime
Various SoilWise practices are described at metadata
At present we're collecting a range of relevant existing vocabularies relevant to the soil domain. The repository is documented at terminology One of our activities is to try to understand how we can crosswalk between these vocabularies, and any gaps in availability of terms. Another activity is related to publication of these vocabularies in an easy to use way for soil scientists.
Various models are in use to capture soil field and laboratory data. Mechanisms are envisioned to capture data in an effective way and share it within the project, in such a way so it easy to use and combine by others, following the FAIR principles. A repository of existing initiatives is being prepared at data-models
The Mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe' (Mission Soil) is a large-scale initiative focused on protecting as well as restoring soils, and promoting sustainable management practices in urban and rural areas. The Mission aims to raise awareness and ensure the long-term health and productivity of soils on all types of land. Moreover, it aims to advance and share knowledge with stakeholders and the general public about sustainable practices related to spatial planning, soil conservation and agricultural techniques, aimed at reducing the use of chemical inputs.
The Soil Mission is one of five Missions funded under the EU Research and Innovation (R&I) Programme Horizon Europe.
The project An open access knowledge and data repository to safeguard soils (SoilWise) is a Soil Mission project coordinated by ILVO - Flanders. SoilWise will provide an integrated and actionable access point to scattered and heterogeneous soil data and knowledge in Europe, making them FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and improve trust, willingness, and ability to share and re-use soil data and knowledge. In three project development cycles, co-creation and co-validation by multi-stakeholder groups are the centre of project activities. SoilWise recognises existing workflows and repositories for specific user needs and aims to work with them to enhance their discoverability, approachability and interconnection. An open, modular, scalable and extensible knowledge and data repository building on existing and new technologies will be provided while respecting data ownership, access policies and privacy. AI- and ML- techniques will be employed to interlink scattered data and knowledge, automatise the processes, infer new knowledge and increase FAIRness. SoilWise applies infrastructure thinking instead of project thinking to design a repository for at least a decade to support EUSO evolvement accordingly.
The project receives funding from the European Union’s HORIZON Innovation Actions 2022 under grant agreement No. 101112838.